...and no, Trump didn't ask him to, pr reimburse him in any way, nor could it be considered an in-kind political donation - in fact, he won't say at all why he set up an LLC to pay $130K to a porn star who was shopping a story about she and Trump...other that it was a "private transaction".

How convenient. Yet totally, totally legal - and definitely not intended to help Trump's election chances, because, y'know, that would be illegal, if not reported as such.

Of course, Cohen previously decried these scurrilous rumors, and he released a statement bearing Daniels’s signature denying any affair, and he called the settlement report “completely false.”

Well, maybe not completely. I mean, yeah, a porn star was paid $130K by an LLC I set up, and she just happened to give me a signed statement that denied it (before and after she kinda, sorta admitted it) but it has nothing to do with my long term client and the impending election, because he definitely did not have an affair with her.

QuoteWhen now-former White House staff secretary Rob Porter sat down for an off-the-record meeting with four reporters hours after the publication of a Daily Mail story showing his first wife with a black eye, he was quick to deny the allegations of physical abuse.

The reporters present for the meeting...pressed Porter to explain the picture of his first wife with a black eye as well as his comment that he had taken the picture in question. He told them what he had told his colleagues: that, on vacation in Venice, the two had quarreled over a Venetian glass vase, and that his then-wife, Colbie Holderness, had accidentally bruised her eye in the course of that altercation.

Well he said it was $130k but she said it felt like it was only $50k at the most.

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

QuoteWhen now-former White House staff secretary Rob Porter sat down for an off-the-record meeting with four reporters hours after the publication of a Daily Mail story showing his first wife with a black eye, he was quick to deny the allegations of physical abuse.

The reporters present for the meeting...pressed Porter to explain the picture of his first wife with a black eye as well as his comment that he had taken the picture in question. He told them what he had told his colleagues: that, on vacation in Venice, the two had quarreled over a Venetian glass vase, and that his then-wife, Colbie Holderness, had accidentally bruised her eye in the course of that altercation.

That one gets an eye-roll too.

It's particularly eye-roll-worthy that this report is emerging from an off-the-record session. If it's not being leaked by someone in the administration, then someone has abandoned their journalistic ethics.

QuoteWhen now-former White House staff secretary Rob Porter sat down for an off-the-record meeting with four reporters hours after the publication of a Daily Mail story showing his first wife with a black eye, he was quick to deny the allegations of physical abuse.

The reporters present for the meeting...pressed Porter to explain the picture of his first wife with a black eye as well as his comment that he had taken the picture in question. He told them what he had told his colleagues: that, on vacation in Venice, the two had quarreled over a Venetian glass vase, and that his then-wife, Colbie Holderness, had accidentally bruised her eye in the course of that altercation.

That one gets an eye-roll too.

It's particularly eye-roll-worthy that this report is emerging from an off-the-record session. If it's not being leaked by someone in the administration, then someone has abandoned their journalistic ethics.

You don’t know the rule, do you? Off-the-record is sacred, unless the guy is lying to your face, in which case the deal is off. It makes sense: off-the-record is an unspoken agreement that I’ll tell you what the real deal is if you agree not to publish it. If the first party doesn’t keep his/her end of the bargain, why should the second party be bound by it?

They send out 10 stories on every thing that comes up. I thought there was a diff story on where the money came from last week.

Absolutely. This is a fundamental part of 45’s strategy to obscure facts and confuse the electorate, especially about anything that might reflect poorly on him. The fact that he does this so frequently also leads people to become so confused that they just throw up their hands and stop trying to discern was is true and what is false.

Another strategy 45 uses is to sow doubt and confusion on the legitimacy of those who criticize him, including organizations that are fundamental to our way of governance like the FBI. If 45 does this long enough, I believe he will eventually claim that federal agencies should report directly to him. If that happens, we will no longer be a republic.

Inside every old person is a young person saying "what happened?"

“Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.” - Reinhold Niebuhr

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” George Orwell

They send out 10 stories on every thing that comes up. I thought there was a diff story on where the money came from last week.

Absolutely. This is a fundamental part of 45’s strategy to obscure facts and confuse the electorate, especially about anything that might reflect poorly on him. The fact that he does this so frequently also leads people to become so confused that they just throw up their hands and stop trying to discern was is true and what is false.

Another strategy 45 uses is to sow doubt and confusion on the legitimacy of those who criticize him, including organizations that are fundamental to our way of governance like the FBI. If 45 does this long enough, I believe he will eventually claim that federal agencies should report directly to him. If that happens, we will no longer be a republic.

I think another thing that will happen is if the Dems win big in 2018, he'll suddenly decide that it was due to Russian hacking.